Noesis

The Journal of the Noetic Society
Number 59
March 1991

THEORIES, QUERIES, AND PUZZLESRick Rosner

Here're the answers to last issue's Elvis quiz:

1.Elvis
nicknamed himself "Crazy".
2.He nicknamed his penis "Little
Elvis".
3.Shortly after he was born, Elvis's
parents placed him in the oven to keep him warm.
4.Southern gentleman that he was, Elvis
preferred nice girls who wore white panties.

So do others, according to British author Martin Amis.This from his most recent novel, London Fields:

Nicola was amazed--Nicola
was consternated--by how few women really understood
about underwear.It was a scandal.If the
effortless enslavement of men was the idea, . . . why halve your chances by
something as trivial as a poor shopping decision? . . . Perhaps women couldn't
believe how simple men really were--how it could all be decided in five minutes
at the hosiery store.At this particular
end of this particular century, they wanted tight bright white underwear, white
underwear.They wanted the female form
shaped and framed, packaged and gift-wrapped, stylized, cartoonified, and
looking, for a moment at least, illusorily pure.They wanted the white lie of virginity.

When reading, it irritates me to encounter characters
grinning.I don't see real people grin,
but literary characters grin frequently. So I was gratified to run into this,
again from London Fields:

He frowned.She laughed.He brightened.She pouted.He grinned.She flinched.Come on: we don't do that.Except when we're
pretending.Only babies frown and
flinch.The rest of us just fake with
our fake faces.

He grinned.No he didn't.If a guy grins at you for real these days, you'd better chop his head
off before he chops off yours.Soon the
sneeze and the yawn will be mostly for show.Even the twitch.

I like books from the library of misanthropy, full of
accurate and vicious social observation--illuminating details that slash human
behavior into easily-digested chunks.Martin Amis isn't bad, but, as with Thorsten Veblen, you have to wait
too long for the punch line.Short and
sweet and razor-sharp are Class, by
Paul Fussell, and Modern Manners, by
P. J. O'Rourke.

5.Cybill
Shepherd said that the best thing about dating Elvis was that he smelled good.6.On Leave It to Beaver, Barbara
Billingsley always wore a string of pearls to camouflage what she considered a
skinny neck.Elvis also thought he had a
skinny neck and had high collars designed to hide his.

For the two items I added to the mystery Xerox test, 101 D,
by W D, and 96 T, by ?, my answers are, 101 Dalmatians, by Walt Disney, and 96
Tears, by ? and the Mysterians.

Ron Hoeflin sends this:

TRIAL TEST #1 Ronald K. Hoeflin
P. O. Box 539
New York, NY 10101

This is the first in a series of ten 25-problem trial tests
from which the problems for a final 48-problem test, the Ultra Test, will be
selected.If you want to try the tests
and see how your score compares with that of other TOPS (Ron's 99th %ile
society), send $5 per test or $25 in advance for the entire series, payable to
"Ronald K. Hoeflin."

For this test, write the word that best completes each analogy.Use reference aids.Misspellings will be counted wrong.Do not consult other persons.

And, here's my latest throw-away theory--that a
statistically significant number of TV characters are named for the streets of
Los Angeles.Sherwood Schwartz says he
picked Gilligan's name out of a phone book, but many other characters have
names that are suspiciously similar to LA's suburban streets:

StreetShow WoodmanWelcome Back, Kotter
HaskellLeave It to Beaver Mayfield""" (the Beav's hometown)
BarringtonDynasty
BundyMarried, with Children
ColbyThe Colbys
VanowenLA Law
BronsonThen Came Bronson

Stuck in traffic, TV writers probably find street names
burned into their unconscious.You might
be able to draw a map of where TV writers live and work based which streets
become characters.

Speaking of TV, couldn't the Let's Make A Deal probabilityproblem that's been hounding Savant, Hoeflin, and In-Genius readers be solved by watching a bunch of re-runs?I called the producer of the latest version
of Let's Make A Deal, Ron Greenberg,
to ask his opinion.He said nobody knows
why contestants pick the doors that they do, which makes me think that I didn't
adequately explain the question.Well,
Monty Hall belongs to the synagogue I just married into, and maybe I'll run
into him sometime.

Most of you must have seen the recent newspaper articles on
left-handedness and accident-prone mortality.I'm left-handed and a spaz, and I want to know about you all.I also want to know if you're naturers or
nurturers; were you born with the ability to kick butt on IQ tests, or did
something in your background make you blossom into a brainiac?Many Noesis
members have innocuous names, while some have exotic-sounding names.Does your name reflect a very normal or very
unusual upbringing or heritage?Please
slap some facts on a post card and send 'em in. (Again, my address and phone are: Rick Rosner,
5139 Balboa Blvd #303, Encino, CA91316-3430, (818) 986-9177. Don't call from April 26 through May 4, as
we'll be honeymooning.)

Here's some other
personal trivia about which I'm curious: As little kids, did any of you have
stuffed animals you dragged around for security, and if so, what were their
names?Mine was named Mr. Rooster, and
my sister's was named Stinky Monkey.My
wife says, "These are brain people, can you really expect them to
respond?Call me crazy, but I can't see
Ron Hoeflin saying, 'I had a little black cat named Boo-Boo Kitty.'"So maybe you don't want to answer this
particular question, but send us something.

What has bugged me for the last nine years or so is why the
sequence should run in that particular order.Yeah, I know that every other term should be a multiple of 2, every
third term a multiple of 3, and so on, but there's nothing to stop a
sequence-maker from assigning non-integers to alphabet letters (or simply not
using selected primes), so that other sequences emerge.

Values for primes can be chosen so that such primes can show
up anywhere in a sequence.a, b, a2,
ab, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, a3, . . . is an unlikely but possible sequence.

A branching decision tree forms all possible sequences.
Starting with a, the first choice is between a2 and b.a, a2 branches into a, a2, a3 and a, a2,
b.a, b branches into a, b, a2 and a, b,
c. So far, so boring, with all forks thus far consisting of two alternatives--a
new prime or the next composite.

Most forks, however, consist of many alternatives.The first three-choice fork in the standard
sequence occurs after ab, where the choices consist of d, a3, and b2.If the values of a and b are unknown, nothing
in the terms a, b, a2, c, ab determines whether a3>b2.Naturally, an infinite number of such choices
must be made in picking out the standard sequence from the meta-sequences.

There is an uncountable infinity of meta-sequences.There is a countable infinity of sequences
formed by leaving out a finite number of primes from the standard
sequence.Leaving 2 and its multiples
out of the standard sequence gives: a, b, c, a2, d, e, ab, f, g, ac, h, b2, a3,
i, j, ad, . . . , where a=3, b5, c7, d11.Leaving 3 and its multiples out of the standard sequence gives: a, a2,
b, c, a3, ab, d, e, ac, a4, f, g, a2b, . . . , where a=2, b5, c7.The countable infinity of meta-sequences
formed by doing only a finite amount of fiddling with the standard sequence can
be likened to the countable infinity of rational numbers, while the uncountable
infinity of all meta-sequences can be likened to the real numbers.

I believe that the standard sequence is "the mother of
all meta-sequences," that the forks along it are richer in alternatives
than the forks along any other meta-sequence.I think that if all possible sequences could be listed, more terms would
be in the order found in the standard sequence than in any other order.[I'd love forsomeone with computer skills (and a computer, even) to check it
out.I've done it by hand for the first
eight terms of all possiblesequences.]

Why do I even waste my time thinking about this?Well, I hope it's a new way of approaching
number theory (Do any of you know if this system has been tried before?), and
that it contains the key to proving the twin prime conjecture.It also provides a way to describe all
possible slices of n-space.More about
this in the future, if you let me know you're interested.

AN APPEAL

Chris Cole would be quite pleased if Noesis became a clearinghouse for pesky problems, problems so
challenging that they stump even you.I'd also be very happy if we could attack such problems together.Noesis
readers have the ability to approach problems numerically, geometrically,
through computer modeling, etc. We have excellent reference skills and together
we have access to many of the world's best libraries.We also know lots of experts.

(And please, would someone with good computer skills check
out my claim that the standard sequence of primes and composites is the richest
branch of the meta-sequence decision tree?)

PLUS . . .

The next Noesis is
the gala fifth anniversary edition.Don't miss the opportunity to send your anniversary greetings,
criticisms, expectations.

ANTI-AGING LETTER FROM CHRIS LANGAN

April 16, 1991 Dear Rick:

Yesterday, I received a full page article from the 3/5/91 Herald News concerning the anti-aging
agent GH-3.The Santa Ana postmark, and
the signature R, convinced me that
you sent it.I gather that Chris Cole is
interested in anti-aging therapies, and thought at first that you must have
meant to send it to him.In any case, thanks
for the information.I inhabit a human
body, and therefore have a keen interest in preserving it.

The original formulation of GH-3 had a procaine base.
Procaine inhibits the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO), which degrades
monoamine-based neurotransmitters like serotinin, norepinephrine, and
dopamine.In the elevated levels
associated with aging, MAO has a depressive effect on the brain through its
depletion of these neurotransmitters.So
GH-3 has an antidepressive or mood-elevating effect.But how many of the clinical effects of GH-3
can be attributed to mood-elevation as opposed to more tangible physiological
regression?E.g., to what extent can it
be replaced by other mood elevators like caffeine?

Procaine is a basic ester of PABA (para-aminobenzoic acid).
An ester is the chemical product of an acid and an alcohol.Procaine is composed of PABA and DEAE
(diethylaminoethanol).The procaine
molecule apparently decomposes as PABA and DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol).The fact that procaine decomposes
metabolically into PABA and DMAE does not automatically imply that its
efficiency can be entirely attributed to these products.While many GH-3 imitations have relied on
PABA as a main ingredient, the only DMAE compound with any track record is Deaner, a prescription drug manufactured
by Riker Pharmaceuticals.Durk Pearson
and Sandy Shaw, authors of the anti-aging bible Life Extension, allegedly take 200-300 mg. of Deaner (or DMAE
bitartrate) a day as an antioxidant, membrane stabilizer, and memory and
learning enhancer . . . and, as they put it, because it is known to
"increase the life span of experimental animals."

PABA is a B vitamin known primarily as an antioxidant,
membrane stabilizer (preventing cellular rupture), and inhibitor of molecular
cross-linkage.The latter phenomenon
interferes with the flexibility and elasticity of tissues.It follows that PABA ought to be good for the
prolongation of your sex life.By the
way, may I congratulate you on your marriage?Here's hoping it came off without a hitch, and that your honeymoon is as
good as honeymoons are supposed to be (I've never been married, and therefore
have no postnuptial experiences).

Apparently, the DEAE/DMAE part of GH-3, along with
L-glutamine, is responsible for its mood-elevating effect, the former through
MAO inhibition and the latter through positive mechanisms. But DMAE also
contributes to the formation of compounds which might help to remove the aging
pigment lipofuscin, which builds up
in neurons and is thought eventually to "clog" them.This would be a physiological regression of
the kind to which I refer.That is, it
would effectively "turn back the clock" on a deleterious physical
aspect of aging, and thereby qualify as a partial "cure" rather than
a mere palliative or symptom-blocker.

Recent evidence seems to suggest a linkage between the aging
of the brain and that of the body, in the sense that things which rejuvenate
the brain have the potential to rejuvenate the body.If such a relationship holds for GH-3, then
it is of potential value.In any case,
it is possible to extend the human lifespan, provided we don't make stupid
errors with untried therapies or rely on given treatments to do necessary
things they don't really do.

While I haven't had a first-hand look at the clinical
evidence, I gather that the age-regressive powers of GH-3 are considered
arguable by some experts.The article
relies mainly on anecdotal evidence.My
question is, have you taken it, and if so, for how long?Have you noticed anything you might call
physiological regression?E.g., smoother
skin, thicker hair, faster reflexes, better vision or sensory acuity, and so
on?Have you ever quit GH-3 for any
significant period, and if so, did you notice anything you might describe as
"withdrawal symptoms"?I
respect your opinion, so don't joke around.

I'm still in my thirties, so I'll settle for a temporary
holding pattern while trying to devise a more permanent escape from
gerontological indignities.I guess
you're either in your late twenties or early thirties yourself.Whatever effects you may have noticed from
GH-3 would no doubt be even more noticeable to an older person.If its alleged life-prolongative effects
increase the earlier one begins to take it, you're definitely a leg up.

Now all you have to do is extricate yourself from bouncing
in bars.I suppose it can seem at times
as though checking ID is all there is to it.But like any "gym rat", I know of several guys who have been
named in lawsuits, pursued by gangsters, shot, knifed, and even infected with
incurable VD as a direct result of working in the field of nightclub
security.It does a man no good to cheat
gradual aging if he seeks a rendezvous with homicide.As you've stated, bars are magnets for the
impaired and deranged, and any actuary knows what that means over long periods
of involvement . . . .

You don't have to print this letter unless you want to.I'm sending a few items for Noesis under separate cover.One is right up your alley, given your avowed
preferences in reading material. It's designed to make you re-think your
position on "the marble thing," which I'm as fed up with as you seem
to be.Fortunately, it's so damned funny
that members shouldn't mind reading it.Incidentally, why don't you print the exact algorithm you used to solve
the first problem you cited in your editorial comments on my last piece?It might lead to some insight.

Best
Regards,Chris
L.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Editor's comments:

I found this letter interesting, but I'm not the
"R" who sent you the article which prompted it.I'll have my 31st birthday as you receive
this issue and am indeed falling apart.I'll give GH-3 a try if it's not too expensive and will report any
results.

I try to hold off aging through daily exercise and limiting
the percentage of fat in my diet.(I
keep my metabolism too high and burn too many calories, unlike skinny
long-lived lab rats.) Cosmetically, I use sunscreen, retin-A, and Rogaine.My life is one extended episode of
psychological regression.

I think west coast bouncing is safer than bouncing on the
east coast.People seem to fight less and
carry fewer weapons.I do piss off lots
of people, and I worry a little about drive-by gunmen.West coast bouncers, myself included, don't
seem to fare as well in east coast bars.

The answer given to problem one in the last issue, which
involved finding the average of some nebulous numbers, was just to see if
anyone was paying attention.Apparently,
you're the only alert reader.There's no
algorithm, since there's not enough information to solve the problem (a
favorite answer for veteran SAT takers).The answer I gave, pi squared divided by 17, was picked more or less at
random, but feel free to use it as the solution to any questionable problem.

IS THIS THE WORLD'S SMARTEST PERSON?

--an April 6 message from Ron Hoeflin . . .

Dear Rick,

The enclosed letter was sent to Cyd Bergdorf, membership
officer of the Triple Nine Society.you
might want to consider including it in Noesis.

I am the former Industrial Psychometrist of the General
Electric Company USA--AEG West Germany, 1956-60, and Westinghouse USA--Siemens
AG West Germany, 1965-66.

I studied psychology starting in 1949 with Johnson at USC,
at UC (Chicago), David Katz at Stockholm, Cox and Stone at Stanford, UC
(Berkeley), with B.F. Skinner at Harvard, and Johnson O'Connor at Human
Engineering Laboratories.I got my Ph.D.
at the age of 22 in 1956.

When I work five days a week intensively in psychometrics,
my IQ goes continuously upwards.In 1960
and again in 1966, I was scoring +200, the highest ever recorded in the whole
history of scientific intelligence testing in the past 86 years.

But I believe this is simply due to daily practice with the
tests themselves, getting the feel of the logical systems involved and being
able to "crack" the tests themselves.It seems as if I almost read the mind of my fellow colleague
psychometrist who invented whatever test I take.I seem to be able to follow his mind and work
out "his" logic, even when it is not mine at all, and even when it is
not (by scientific standards) even scientific, which is more frequently the
case than anybody outside of psychometrics realizes.

I studied mathematical symbolic logic for years, with Sven
Hedin at the University of Uppsala, with Quine at Harvard, etc., and I'm
skeptical about the reality attributed to the tests themselves at the extremes
of difficulty, in terms of mathematical symbolic logic.Most psychometrists are not as far advanced
as I am in this field and do not see the multiplicity of logical systems
possible and equally valuable and creditable.

I speak 13 languages, including 10 of the 11 languages of
Western Europe, 8 of them fluently.I'm
a phenomena of academic performance. If I don't work, I can handle 5 complete
university study programmes at the same time in 8-year cycles, without the
slightest of problems passing all the tests in all the subjects, writing and
defending doctoral theses on each subject, etc.

I'm undoubtably a super-genius, but I'm not sure that I'm
the most intelligent being in the world today in terms of psychometrics.I hope someday that some research institution
will take me on as a subject of investigation to really find out whether I am
as intelligent as I seem, or whether I figure things out to some extent by
"feeling", by psychological interpretation of how the minds of others
work.

I'm undoubtably very sensitive.Music critics regard me as the top concert
organist of the world.I was the Harvard
Student Organist and Assistant to Prof. E. Power Biggs at the New England
Conservatory, Boston.

I've given over a thousand pipe organ concerts in 94
countries of 5 continents, plus over tow thousand lectures and seminars at over
600 universities, institutes of technologies, major seminaries, research
institutions, etc., in 13 languages.

I will not go into the subject of how many doctorates I
have.I believe that I have obtained
many of my doctorates simply because my Professors were under the
"suggestion", almost auto-hypnotized, that being a super-genius, I
should get the doctorate and "get out" of their department or school
or faculty or university.My presence
seems to drive most university professors mad.They become quite hysterical.

I'm not particularly interested in mathematics itself,
strangely.If I can work out how a
process works in my mind, I have no interest in formulating how it works on
paper with symbols.Unless I have to
explain it to somebody else.

And I'm not particularly interested in teaching.I don't seem to believe that anybody learns
anything very adavanced, very important, from anybody else, at higher
levels.I'm no guru.I couldn't care less the way others think,
and the more different their way of thinking is in relationship to my own, the
more interesting I find them to be.

I've been initiated in a number of secret societies.I've gone to Tibet a number of times and I've
written a number of books well known to the world of the esoteric, occultist,
the philosophical lodges of free masonry, etc., among them:

My Life in
Lhassa
Life in the Potala
The Mysteries of Tibet
Lamastic Mysteries
Tantric Science & Art

I seem to be the only person in the Western World who can
undergo major surgery without anesthesia, with the use of tantric Tibetan
hypnosis.

I hope this is enough about myself to frighten you enough
not to reply, or to reply that you are not interested in my membership.In any case, I don't doubt that you are
psychometric geniuses but I would like to know what your objective is, or is it
like MENSA (I'm a M') without visible objective, sort of social, as if we were
birds that needed a nest reserved for higher IQ.

I don't believe that higher IQ makes anybody good.Most of the most intelligent people in the
world that I've known, have been sort of satanic in my opinion.And in any case, destructive.Most of the very good people seem to be
rather stupid, me included.General
Norman Schwartzkopf has a +170 IQ according to the press, but he is killing
people and messing up everything for the future of Christianity and US Foreign
Affairs in the Arab and Islamic World.

General MacArthur had the highest IQ at West Point, but he
was a psychotic tied up in an Oedipus Complex with his mother.

Hitler had a powerful memory, and undoubtably very high IQ.

In all the MENSA meetings I've been to, I've never found
anybodysaying they were trying to
become a saint, or even searching for illumination.

Intelligence is very disappointing, particularly since most
intelligent people seem to be doing their best to destroy all other intelligent
people, or at least all those that will not accept their particular leadership
or dictatorship.

It would be interesting if you could send over a team of
your members to test me now that I haven't worked for the past 25 years in
pyrometrics, and then test me again after some days or weeks of intensive daily
work in psychometrics.

One thing is for sure.As time goes on, I'm far less concerned about impressing anybody about
being brilliant, and I'm far more concerned about my own moral philosophy.As for the rest of humanity, I've given up
trying to convince anybody that all sorts of collapses are going to happen
according to my calculations, not only the ecological. There is such a thing as
a collective psychological collapse too, I'm sure, and I've worked out the
prognosis in terms of when it will take place and I'm sure it is in my
life-time.

Humanity is trying to play smart in a game in which human
intelligence can only lose against cosmic intelligence.We are nothing but creatures of limited
intelligence within a system that is infinitely more intelligent than we
are.The sooner we go back to our
rightful place within the system, the sooner we will go on existing as a
species.

I get up at 5 A.M., I do my exercises, I take my sauna or
hot and cold baths, I meditate, I do my yoga exercises, I read an average of
+200 books a year (I have over 10,000 books in my head) and I'm sure I don't
influence anybody.In the past 6 years I
haven't worked very much, just studied.

Someday the chips will be on the table and humanity will be
hysterical to save itself.Up to that
moment, I don't think anybody is going to offer me very much of a job, and most
certainly not an important one. It seems to me that almost everybody is playing
the useful idiot nowadays, just to make money or to be popular, or I don't know
what for, just to be "in" the whole idiotic process.

I've dropped out of it all.I will not loan my time or my name to any organization that is playing
the dirty wicked destructive game of the Establishment controlled by idiots and
imbeciles.So please be straight and
honest about what your intentions as a club are because I will only play ball
with people that are very much on the ball and that means very much against
everybody else.

When the right time comes, either we have to take over, or
this planet is not going to exist anymore.

And I haven't found any group of people yet with the guts to
face that obvious fact, much less start doing something about it.

I hope I make myself clear.MENSA is going no place I'm sure.It is already too big to go anyplace.

It will only take a few dozen people to KO the system.The problem is that I haven't found yet one
single person that sees the whole matter clearly as I do, as a Gestalt.

Markus Wolf, a good friend of mine, formerly Chief of the
East German Intelligence Services, has sent me the tape recordings and films
that indicate without doubt that Bush is an aggressive homosexual.

He also sent me all the evidence necessary to believe that
the Kuwaitien Royal Family and their banks are the biggest capitalists in the
world loaning high-risk high-profit capital to the drug traffic worldwide.

I myself know personally and am well-documented on the fact
that the actual Pope was an SS Officer in the 2nd World War and wasn't ordained
a R.C. Priest in 1946 at all.He was in
Rome (I knew him there personally before
he became a priest.) as a Seminarian up to 1950, that I'm sure of, because I
knew him in Rome.

I could go on and on.There is hardly anybody in the limelight nowadays who doesn't have a
false past, a facade, a lie that builds him up somehow, usually fantastically.

For example, I'm well-documented on the fact that Gorby
wasn't even born in the USSR.He is a
Greek, son of Greek refugees who went to the USSR when he was a child.No newspaper anyplace has ever said so.

I know Martin Bormann and Eva Braun personally, where they
live in Buenos Aires and Bariloche respectively.

I could go on and on.I don't know why it is so easy for me to investigate people, and why
everybody else accepts some stupid invention of the newspapermen paid by the
interested parties to keep up the bla-bla, all lies.

Chirac, Mayor of Paris, Candidate to the Presidency of
France in 2nd place, is an epileptic and drug addict.Nobody in the press dares say so.

Margaret Thatcher was a drug addict at Oxford (that is why
she was kicked out as a student of chemistry).She is very much a drug addict now, and married to one of the biggest
drug traffic operators (hashish from Turkey to start with over 30 years ago) in
the world today.

Obviously all this crap has to be cleaned up for good, in
one single take-over.

I cannot think of worse people to run our world than those
that are running it nowadays.If you
think otherwise, then don't bother to answer.If you're square, if you're within the Establishment and want to stay
there, go to hell with everybody else.It is all going to be flushed down the drain, or there is not going to
be any more world.

I'm not in the left.I'm in the far right, the far right that is so far right that it is more
left than left.I'm where the two
extremes meet, because they don't go off into space, they run around in an
orbit and come back together at a point that only a super-genius with my mass
of education and experience can see in historical space-dimension.

I have an aunt that has 33 doctorates, the record of all
history.But she is an idiot in
comparison with me.I started superior
conservatory of music at 6, I began university at 10, I should have received my
first doctorate at 14.I'm outside of
any definition of academic performance in the history of education.

Don't believe it.Just come over and test me.Test
me to the point of your contented hearts.Test me in all the fields I have studied. I've held up against a dozen
university professionals and university professors and scientists on television
many times, in over a dozen major academic fields.

I don't take any crap about somebody else being more
intelligent than I am simply because they have arranged to be able to pass this
or that little standard psychometric test.That is all nonsense. Psychometric tests are all available, even those I
created secretly for GE, AEG, Westinghouse, Siemens, USAID, UNESCO, UNICEF,
universities and governments.They can
all be memorized.It is all nonsense to
say that one person is more intelligent than another simply because you
administer the same test to both of them at the same time and one has access to
the test beforehand and the other hasn't taken the trouble to do so.

If you really want to test me, you test to the limit of my
intelligence, otherwise it is simply standard gimmicks.

IQ is simply what the tests indicate, at lower levels, I
quite agree. But at my level it is something else.

A psychometrist who only has a 135 or 150 or 165 IQ is not
in a position to create a test to judge my IQ.That is nonsense.He utilizes his
lower logical framework to test my higher logical framework.Either I "feel" out his lower
intelligence and his more simple logical framework, or I fail his test.That is ridiculous.

I hope I've been on the level with you.

Sincerely
yours, Chakravartin
Boddhisattva

Chateau de La Roche Dieu
26, rue de Vauboyen
91570 BIEVRES France

FAX: Paris (1) 60193230

THE PRINCIPLE OF INSUFFICIENT REASONby Chris Cole

The "principle
of insufficient reason" is difficult to formulate precisely.Basically, it holds that if there is
insufficient reason to distinguish between states, then they are equally
likely.L. J. Savage in The Foundations
of Statistics (Wiley, 1954, p. 64) gives the following argument for the
Principle (he is discussing the outcome of rolling three dice):

Suppose there is an
argument leading to the conclusion that one of the possible combinations of
ordered scores, say {1, 2, 3}, is more probable than some other, say {6, 3,
4}.Then the information on which that
hypothetical argument is based has such symmetry as to permit a completely
parallel, and therefore equally valid, argument leading to the conclusion that
{6, 3, 4} is more probable than {1, 2, 3}.Therefore, it was asserted, the probabilities of all combinations must
be equal.

Our own Chris Langan has recently offered a similar
argument:

You must not only symmetrize color (i.e.,
white-nonwhite), but also the possible distributions in terms of color
alone.Otherwise you're imparting phony
confirmation to information you can't legitimately claim . . . the information
embodied in any asymmetry among allowed colors or initial distributions.Thus, the white nonwhite ratio n/(10 - n) is
equally probable for all n from 1 to 10.

Let me explain. The method by which marbles were
colored and put into the box can be known to you only through the actual
distribution.Unequal probabilities
among possible (initial) distributions would imply that you have a priori
information on this method and so on the actual distribution itself.But the problem formulation gives you no such
information.If such information emerges
over repeated experiments, the problem changes and Bayesian inference is relativized
to new data.But until then, you're more
limited.

I once was a proponent of the Principle.I remember the following dialog with Feynman:

Cole:
Suppose I have an urn containing some marbles.I reach into the urn and pull out a marble.What is the probability that the marble is
white?Feynman:Are the marbles in the urn white and black?Cole:Suppose I don't tell you.Feynman:How many colors are in the urn?Cole:Suppose I don't tell you.Feynman:How many marbles are in the urn?Cole:Suppose I don't tell you.Feynman:Suppose I don't answer.

Over the years, I have come to reject the Principle.Let me state my reasons:

1.The Principle
tries to get something for nothing.The
arguments for the Principle given above would be valid if we were forced to
assign a probability to every statement.But the Epimenides Paradox ("This statement is false")would really lead to a contradiction if we
were forced to assign a truth value to every statement.As Tarski, et. al., discovered, the only way out was to admit that some
statements are meaningless.Ithink we must likewise admitthat the probability of some statements is
unknown.

2.The Principle does not help anyway.It leaves unspecified the partitioning of
nature into states -- a highly arbitrary procedure.I have two marbles in an urn: what is the
probability that they are of different colors?One set of states {white-white, white-black, black-black} yields 1/3.Another set of states {white-white,
white-black, black-white, black-black} yields 1/2.These cannot both be correct.Only information about how the urn was
prepared will allow us to determine which set of states are truly equiprobable.

Why do so many people (like me) fall for this
Principle?Many people subscribe to a
subjectivist interpretation of probability, in which it seems strange to say
that the probability of something can be unknown.After all, probability is an expression of
ignorance -- when are you too ignorant to know the probability?The simple answer is:when you don't know how to partition the
states.This is a subtle point, because
most problems have an apparently natural set of states.In the original marble problem, Chris Langan
finds the ten possibilities of one through ten white marbles to be a natural
set of states.The example above shows
that this is only one of many possible sets of states.

CTMU -- MORE COMMENTSby Chris Cole

1.Ed Fredkin is a
fairly well-known person in certain circles.A quick search of the literature should turn up some articles by or
about him and his theories.However,
before starting a priority squabble, let's establish that there is something
worth squabbling about.

2.Chris Langan has
responded to my challenge to apply CTMU to something specific with a solution
to the marble problem that I think is incorrect.Does this invalidate CTMU?I'm not sure, since I do not see how CTMU was
applied in the problem.

3.Rick Rosner
writes:

I believe in matter and
space as information held in some vast awareness, which doesn't seem so far
from CTMU.I also think that the
increasing prevalence of such belief is part of the zeitgeist of the near
future.I agree with Langan that quantum
nonlocality is consistent with such belief, and I think that Langan makes a
strong, often clear presentation of his position.

Historically, zeitgeist has reflected cultural
presupposition more than truth.The
Founding Fathers were fixated upon showing that Newton's Laws were embodied in
the Constitution.Today we laugh at such
charming naivete.Being in the
"information age," I am skeptical of the universe as
information.I think we should try to avoid
saying things that our grandchildren will laugh at.

I intend to write
more later about quantum nonlocality, but for the moment suffice it to say that
I do not see how this confirms CTMU.